How to Choose The Best Multivitamin

It can be maddening sorting through the unending number of vitamins on the market today.

Based on my over 25 years of experience, I feel I can offer to you some simple yet effective tips when choosing quality vitamin supplements for not all supplements are created equal.

Until there is a medical review of emerging nutrition supplements, hopefully this short article will be that guide for you.

Clearly, it’s vitally important to your health that you choose vitamins that are actually USED or assimilated by the body and not quickly eliminated.

Did you know that 90% of vitamins are actually urinated out?

Don’t believe me? Try this simple test.

Take an off-the-shelf vitamin brand, follow their recommended daily allowance and within an hour, sometimes less, you will urinate it out — and your urine will have a significantly darker yellow color.

I know talking about body elimination is not something one talks about at parties, but it is important to understand what is happening here.

Why does that happen?

It’s because the vast majority of vitamin supplement products are not assimilated by the body and because they are in fact literally not capable of being utilized or assimilated by the body.

Yet the supplement industry of which vitamin or nutritional supplements are a part, are a literal multi-billion dollar a year enterprise.

Without any further adieu, here are the key things to look for when choosing quality vitamin products.

Product Development and Nutrient Reactions: The supplement you’re considering should be rigorously tested and its creation process overseen by certified professionals. Vitamins work in a precise symbiotic synergism. Getting optimal assimilation is 0% art, 100% science. In other words, the multi-vitamin should be scientifically formulated and each batch should be certified (see point #2).

Manufacturing Procedures: These should utilize pharmaceutical blending not paddle/ribbon blender-type mixers. In addition, contact the company to ask if they have a Certificate of Analysis (COA) on file, confirming the potency of each batch. If the company ignores you or hesitates, that’s not a good sign. Lastly, you should select a supplement maker that adheres to pharmaceutical GMP compliance — this is the highest standard possible.

Optimal Delivery System: The supplement should have enteric coating for optimal assimilation in the human system. This is critical yet almost nobody considers this when choosing a vitamin. If they did, they would save a lot of money.

Product Quality & Freshness: The ingredients the vitamins are made from should be made in smaller batches with the manufacturing process NOT outsourced out to other manufacturers. Remember, most vitamin and mineral supplement makers, as ill as herbal product manufacturers are unregulated by the FDA. While this has its pros and cons, a vast majority of supplements don’t even insert the claimed ingredients into the supplement and contamination is a legitimate threat (again, this is why you want pharmaceutical GMP compliance).

Nutraceutical Quality: You want a vitamin or supplement product that is pharmaceutical grade quality. Again, look for vitamins that are enteric coated.

Value for Money: They should be inexpensive yet provide discernible benefits. However, with that said, the old saying of “you get what you pay for” is true. For a nutraceutical-quality, pharmaceutical grade supplement, expect to pay $45 to $50 or so per 30-day supply. You get what you pay for. In the long run, paying for quality is never dumb.

Vitamins & Co-Factors, Standardized Herbal Extracts, Amino Acids, Active Enzymes, & Essential Minerals and Trace Elements. Ideally, a multi-vitamin should have vitamins but the necessary co-factors along with the other elements mentioned in the bullet point #7. The more comprehensive containing a broad range of synergistic nutrients and micro-nutrients is essential for maximum impact.

Excipients. The “excipients” should be the highest quality. Ask the vitamin manufacturer as to what specific excipients they’re using. Excipients are the binding agents that hold together the vitamin tablet. Excipients are substances that are added to vitamin formulas or tablets that bind while not providing nutritive value. Examples of excipients include monoglycerides, magnesium stearate, modified food starch, etc. Some vitamin companies even use silica — or what people usually refer to as “sand” — as an excipient.

Easy to Use: They should be easily ingestable at any time.

Product Delivery: The supplement should be easy to order and shipping should ideally be free.

Money-Back Guarantee: The longer the guarantee, the better. Look for guarantees longer than 30 days. You want 120 days or more. The longer the guarantee, the more convinced the manufacturer is of their product.

Contact Information: It should be very easy to contact the company via phone and email.

ManufacturingProcess

Another key component of vitamin potency comparison is the manufacturing process. There are four main areas of manufacturing that are relevant here, i.e., scientific formulation, potency of ingredients (I’ve already discussed that), type of facility, and verification of ingredients on label. Let’s discuss them now in more depth.

ScientificFormulation

When doing a vitamin product comparison, the ideal supplement should be scientifically formulated yet literally almost all of the supplements on the market worldwide are not.

It’s critical that in a vitamin product with many nutrients be formed with scientific knowledge at the cellular level. Did you know that some vitamins cancel each other out and some need other minerals to do their job?

For example, Vitamin D actually enhances calcium absorption in the body, and inhibits its excretion by the kidneys, yet boron is important for calcium utilization; vitamin B5 is critical to metabolizing amino acids.

In addition, a good vitamin will stimulate the liver to make CoEnzymeQ10 thus avoiding the need to purchase this important but expensive ingredient, (unless the user is taking a statin drug).

Type ofFacility

In the vitamin potency comparison process you may be engaged in, look for GMP certified facilities that are regularly inspected by government authorities. Do you think this irrelevant? Supplement fraud is utterly rampant.

Here’s one example.

As reported by Medscape January 24, 2000, “High levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been identified in five brands of shark liver oil capsules that are available internationally over-the-counter.” PCBs are toxic to the body.

In another study done by Time Magazine as reported July 31, 2000, eight of 21 brands tested we’re found to have pesticides and lead. This dovetails into my next point, verification of ingredients.ingredients with larger molecular size to selected enzymes which when released in the upper intestine break the molecules down to a smaller size to enable easy transfer of the nutrients through the intestinal wall into the blood stream and then on to the liver.

This delivery system enables the tablets to pass through your stomach undamaged by the harsh stomach acids. When your enteric-coated vitamin tablets go into the alkaline environment of the duodenum (the first part of your small intestine), the enteric coating dissolves in 20 to 30 minutes.

Once that is accomplished, the active ingredients of the vitamin tablets are released over a period of 25 to 35 minutes.

This happens before the tablets finish its journey through your duodenum. The end result is that the active ingredients are absorbed into the bloodstream.

So, now you can see why you should only settle for the sophisticated enteric coated delivery system. To settle for run-of-the-mill vitamins is a waste of money for you’re almost literally flushing your money down the toilet.

Key Nutrients to Look For in Nutritional Supplements

When engaging in the rating of multiple vitamins, consider this: Optimum multivitamins need more than just basic vitamins and minerals. Look for other specialty nutrients that include:

Potent herbal standardized extracts

Antioxidant combinations

Preventative ingredients

Broad spectrum combinations of nutrients — important for creating a synergistic effect in the body.

It is only in the last 10 years or so that herbals have begun to be more accepted by the public. They’ve long been demonized by an entrenched Western medical establishment who wanted to maintain the status quo as well as their profit margins.

Did you know, for example, that the cholesterol lowering drug industry is a $20 billion dollar a year industry? If you came on their turf with herbal medicine interventions that not only lower your cholesterol but do it safely with no side effects at a literal fraction of the cost, that was and is most disconcerting to them.

It’s still egregious but progress has been made. Herbals like ginger, olive leaf, and red clover have potent compounds that improve blood pressure, thin the blood, and strengthen the immune system

Conclusion

There you have it. Follow these guidelines and you will not only save money but you will get the best supplement possible.

If you only remember one thing from this report, remember this: You want pharmaceutical grade quality supplements. Anything less is a waste of money and you’re being taken.

After literally looking years for the best supplements around, I found a company that meets all these criteria discussed in this free report.

I was at first skeptical as so many vitamins I’ve tried in the past didn’t come anywhere near close to their promised benefits (read my home page to see just how jaded I was).

As this company has a one-year, 100% money-back guarantee, though, that persuaded me to give it a try.

No company offers that kind of guarantee unless they are absolutely sure their products are top quality. Moreover, they actually guarantee a minimum of 80 percent assimilability! That is, to the best of my knowledge unprecedented in the supplement or vitamin industry.

Of course, you won’t be able to quantify the exact percentage of bio-assimilation without your system. However, you will feel the difference in your health. I know I did and it was tangible.

When I decided to give them a shot, I thought if they’re willing to back up their products with such a bullet-proof guarantee, they must be really confident in their line of products.

So, I gave them a test period and I literally and immediately felt better. I’ve been taking their vitamins now for five and a half years and have improved my health commensurately.

I realize now I felt better as I had a vitamin deficit and such a feeling of “flushing” is common to those who don’t have enough critical vitamins and minerals in their system. Of course, everybody’s different and you might have another effect.

I take these vitamins on a daily basis. (Or, I take their other supplements, e.g., their bee pollen supplement or their fish oil supplements.)

They have female specific vitamin as well as male specific vitamins that are formulated with the differences of the sexes in mind. Many consider them to be respectively the best multivitamin for women and the best multivitamin for men on the market today.

This company is based in New Zealand and in their country, vitamin supplements are actually required to adhere to the same quality standards that drug manufacturers in the US are required to follow.

As you may know, vitamin manufacturers are not regulated in the US and that may be why there is so much dishonesty and fraud being committed right now with the supplement industry.

I had to go out of the US to find my supplements (they ship anywhere in the world with orders over $60 USD getting you free shipping).

Even without qualifying for free shipping their shipping prices are comparable to prices in the domestic US.

Delivery only takes 4 to 10 business days. I live in California, USA and get mine in four to five days typically.

I recommend them heartily without reservation.

You can find out more about their product line here by clicking the graphic above.